Since the late 1980s, after a period of fluctuation appropriately dubbed ‘post-modernism’, the shift towards a type of art that uses all possible media in all possible ways was stepped up a notch.

Meanwhile, aesthetic-technical devices have invaded the streets, shops, shopping centres, railway stations and airports, public spaces, company lobbies and offices, television studios, entertainment venues and nightclubs. In every sphere, the world around us has become aestheticised: body aesthetics, the design of objects and spaces, the aestheticisation of consumption, tourism – and even moral aestheticisation in the form of political correctness and right thinking.

The public has become accustomed to this dual aesthetic regime: in everyday life, they enjoy the beauty of their surroundings, while in the art world, they accept almost anything. In fact, art operates exactly like the settings in which they find themselves immersed on a daily basis.

The question raised, then, is: what differentiates this Art, eternally ‘contemporary’ despite its metamorphoses, from the ‘normal’ world in which it and we exist?

The answer is: not much, beyond the existence of Protected Aesthetic Zones (ZEP) sheltering it from the outside world, as in the vial of Paris Air by Marcel Duchamp (1919), which contains several centicubes of what purports to be Parisian air, or the can of Artist’s Shit by Piero Manzoni (1961) protecting supposed excrement, whether from Piero Manzoni, from someone else, or perhaps not even excrement at all.

Rather like the Zones to Defend (ZAD) created by anarchist minorities or the Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) by Hakim Bey, these aesthetic zones are not only physical spaces encompassing contemporary art museums, galleries, art centres, art schools, art shows such as biennials, triennials and quadrennials and university art departments, but also specialist magazines, ‘Contemporary Art’ sections in newspapers, magazines and journals, websites about art, auction houses, foundations and collections, associations and unions of agents and critics – in short, any location, space or community where art is cultivated.

ZEPs proclaim: ‘Warning: art!’.

ZEPs accommodate and protect artistic devices, whether they are concrete like a museum, virtual like a website providing information on artists’ popularity, or legal entities like a union of art critics or a symposium, allowing them to exist and to operate under a particular form of immunity.

Going one step further, Duchamp’s vial or Manzoni’s can swell to take the shape of a building by Frank Gehry (Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and LVMH Foundation in Paris), Hans Hollein (Frankfurt Museum for Modern Art), Coop Immelb(l)au (Lyon, Musée des Confluences) or Álvaro Siza Vieira (Porto, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art).

The ZEP itself – the package, the vial, the can – becomes Art. With its spectacular architecture, from far away in the geographical space and still further away in the communication sphere, it proclaims a promise of Art.

I have just described what takes place in ZEPs, as well as their role in signposting, identifying and protecting Art.

But what about those ZEPs within an already aestheticized society, which protect a form of aestheticization deemed more superior still?

In fact, cultural and economic changes have transformed Art itself, which has become an integral part of economic, tourism, cultural and social activities, to which it transmits its own value while in turn becoming infused with their values – those relating to money, entertainment, and, surprising as it may seem, morality.

The plurality of practices and approaches, the mix of genres and, above all, their disappearance, the phenomenon of globalisation and the dawn of new geographical areas have clear consequences, coming together at fairs and biennials, at events held at museums and art centres. Well-known artists rub shoulders with designers, art directors from fashion houses, artists from the Global South and LGBTQ activists.

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